1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conference support technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, when a conference or meeting is held in companies, schools, and research institutions, it is common to summarize the contents of the conference or meeting using a whiteboard. Some whiteboards electronically display and store written contents using a projector and digitizer. These whiteboards are called digital whiteboards or interactive whiteboards, and have become widespread because of their great convenience. In this specification, these electronic whiteboards are simply referred to as whiteboards hereinafter.
To allow ready use of whiteboards, many of them have a function of pasting a half-finished character/graphic object, which is called a template or stencil. Note that a template is a relatively large character/graphic object, and is used to make the whole document conform to a predetermined layout. On the contrary, a stencil is a relatively small character/graphic object, and is used when the user creates an easy-to-understand document by arranging and connecting a plurality of stencils.
Furthermore, a conference support system for summarizing the minutes of a conference and managing an overall conference flow is becoming common. This system and the above whiteboard are often used in combination with each other. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-099414 discloses a technique for automatically preparing graphic objects corresponding to conference participants on a whiteboard.
The technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-099414, however, does not automatically prepare, from conference information such as conference minutes, character/graphic objects derived from the contents of a conference. The conference participants have to create by handwriting character/graphic objects reflecting the contents of the conference on the whiteboard, which is cumbersome.
Moreover, even if the contents of a character/graphic object are corrected, the conference information such as conference minutes does not reflect the correction. It is, therefore, troublesome for the user to match the contents represented by the conference information with those on the whiteboard.